Ask the Author: Kate Wyer

Only in Motion by Kate Wyer appears in the June issue and talks with us about willing herself into a collision, good shades of lipstick and other important matters.

1. How do you will yourself into a collision?

I was teaching at a Baltimore city public school and one of my friends, also a teacher, told me that she wanted to be in a car accident so she could have a break, a sort of breakdown, without anyone judging her. This story is an extension of that thought. Willing yourself into a collision is both a passive and an active act. It’s passive because you are not doing anything physical to hurt yourself, but it’s also active because you are inviting violence upon yourself. Willing yourself into a collision is the opposite of the will to power– a life-affirmative idea– although it shares some of the questioning of Christan morality and it does portray a kind of individualism.

2. What do you want on your headstone?

I’m going to be cremated for a number of reasons ( embalming– WTF?, being locked in a box that is then put into a cement box and then covered with lots of dirt, and methane– gross) but you don’t want to hear me talk about that. Lord, I don’t know what I would want on a headstone. I’m not the narrator, you know. Let’s settle with, “Kate Wyer: Loving wife, dog-mother and…. gardener.” Cough into your sleeve, I know you what to.

3. What would the name of your goth band be? Whose songs would you cover?

Remember when goth was relevant enough to be featured as the soundtrack of Lost Highway? Ha! I play the mandolin and my grandfather’s ukulele, so my goth band would appeal to the freakfolk/goth demographic. You might have stumbled onto an untapped market.

I’m much more interested in the Gothic as seen by the Romantics. Back then people were always swooning over the sublime. I could call the band, The Sincope’s (intentional spelling), or maybe The Revenants.

I would cover any Manson song about drugs because that’s a sure way to be hated by parents. I think that’s the goal of every goth band…

4. What shade of lipstick would look good on me?

Well, honey cakes, do you have warm undertones or cool ones? Do you want a fabulous color or are you more of the natural type? Matte or shiny? And don’t worry, you’re in good hands. I worked as a make-up artist for a few years and in Baltimore that means that I’ve made-up my fair share of men. I just ask that you shave before I make you pretty.

5. Give us a sample of what you want to hear in your eulogy.

I don’t really think about my death in abstract ways like that. I gave the eulogy at my father’s funeral when I was a teenager. I don’t know how I did it. I don’t think I could do it now. That said, forget the funeral and just have an Irish wake. My eulogy would be someone running around and transcribing all of the drunken conversations (at the wake) and then reading them, dramatically, onto a cassette tape and then mailing copies to my extended family.